House of Many Ways (17 page)

“The encyclopedia
said
,” Peter argued. “Lubbocks are solitary.”

Arguing fiercely about it, they wrangled their way through the inner door and turned left into the corridor. There Peter made a defiant dash for the window. Charmain dashed after him and held him back by his jacket. Waif dashed after them, squeaking with distress, and contrived to tangle herself with Peter’s feet so that he fell forward with both hands on the window. Charmain looked nervously out at
the meadow, gleaming peacefully in orange sunset light, where the castle was still squatting beside the burned black patch. It was one of the queerest buildings she had ever seen.

There was a flash of light so bright that it blinded them.

Instants later there came the clap of an explosion as loud as the light was bright. The floor beneath them jiggled and the window blurred in its frame. Everything shook. Through tears of dazzle mixed with blots of blindness, Charmain thought she saw the castle vibrating all over. With ears fuzzy and deaf, she thought she heard rocks crash and grind and tumble.

Clever Waif! she thought. If Peter had been outside, he might be dead by now.

“What do you think that was?” Peter asked when they could almost hear again.

“Calcifer destroying the lubbock eggs, of course,” said Charmain. “The rocks he went to are straight under the meadow.”

They both blinked and blinked, trying to clear
away blobs of blue and gray and yellow dazzle that would keep floating inside their eyes. They both peered and peered. It was hard to believe it, but nearly half the meadow was now missing. A curved piece, like a huge bite, had gone from the sloping green space. Below that, there must have been quite a landslide.

“Hmm,” said Peter. “You don’t think he destroyed himself as well, do you?”

Charmain said, “I hope
not
!”

They waited and watched. Sounds came back to their ears, almost as usual apart from a little fizzing. The blots gradually faded from their eyes. After a while, they both noticed that the castle was drifting, in a sad, lost way, across the meadow toward the rocks at the other end. They waited and watched until it drifted up over the rocks and out of sight along the mountainside. There was still no sign of Calcifer.

“He probably came back to the kitchen,” Peter suggested.

They went back there. They opened the back
door and peered out among the laundry, but there was no sign anywhere of a floating blue teardrop shape. They went through the living room and opened the front door. But the only blue out there was the hydrangeas.

“
Do
fire demons die?” Peter said.

“I’ve no idea,” Charmain said. As always, in times of trouble, she knew what she wanted to do. “I’m going to read a book,” she said. She sat on the nearest sofa, pulled her glasses up, and picked
The Magician’s Journey
up off the floor. Peter gave an angry sigh and went away.

But it was no good. Charmain could not concentrate. She kept thinking of Sophie, and of Morgan too. It was quite plain to her that Calcifer was, in some strange way, part of Sophie’s family. “It would be even worse than losing
you
,” she said to Waif, who had come to sit on her shoes. She wondered if she should go to the Royal Mansion and tell Sophie what had happened. But it was dark now. Sophie was probably having to have formal supper, sitting opposite the lubbockin prince, with candles and things.
Charmain did not think she dared interrupt another occasion in the Mansion. Besides, Sophie was worried sick about that threat to Morgan. Charmain did not want to worry her more. And perhaps Calcifer would turn up in the morning. He was made of fire, after all. On the other hand, that explosion was enough to blow anything to bits. Charmain thought of bits of blue flame scattered about inside a landslide—

Peter came back into the living room. “I know what we ought to do,” he said.

“Yes?” Charmain said eagerly.

“We ought to go and tell the kobolds about Rollo,” Peter said.

Charmain stared. Took her glasses off and stared more clearly. “What have the kobolds got to do with Calcifer?”

“Nothing,” Peter said, rather puzzled. “But we can prove that the lubbock paid Rollo to make trouble.”

Charmain wondered whether to spring up and hit him round the head with
The Magician’s Journey. Bother
the kobolds!

“We ought to go now,” Peter began persuasively, “before—”

“In the morning,” Charmain said, firmly and definitely. “In the morning,
after
we’ve been up to those rocks to see what happened to Calcifer.”

“But—,” said Peter.

“Because,” Charmain said, quickly thinking of reasons, “Rollo’s going to be off somewhere hiding his crock of gold. He ought to be there when you accuse him.”

To her surprise, Peter thought about this and agreed with her. “And we ought to tidy Wizard Norland’s bedroom,” he said, “in case they bring him back tomorrow.”

“You go and do that,” Charmain said—before I throw my book at you, she thought, and probably the vase of flowers after that!

Charmain was still thinking of Calcifer when she got up next morning. As she came out of the bathroom, she saw that Peter was busily engaged in changing the sheets on Great-Uncle William’s bed and stuffing the old sheets into a laundry bag. Charmain sighed. More work.

“Still,” she said to Waif as she put down the usual bowl of dog food, “it keeps him busy and happy while I look for Calcifer. Now, are you coming up to those rocks with me?”

Waif, as always, was only too pleased to go
wherever Charmain went. After breakfast, she trotted eagerly after Charmain through the living room to the front door. But they never went to the rocks. As Charmain put out her hand to the doorknob, Waif charged out from behind her and burst the door open. And there was Rollo on the doorstep in the act of reaching his small blue hand out for his daily crock of milk. Uttering tiny snarls, Waif sprang upon him, got her jaws round Rollo’s neck, and pinned him to the ground.

“Peter!”
Charmain roared, standing in a pool of spilled milk. “Come quickly! We need a bag!” She put one foot on Rollo to keep him in place.
“Bag! Bag!”
she screamed. Rollo kicked madly and bounced about under her shoe, while Waif let go of him in order to bark. Rollo added to the din by yelling, “Help! Murder!
Assault!
” in a strong grating howl.

Peter, to do him justice, arrived at a run. He took one look at the scene in the doorway and snatched up one of Mrs. Baker’s embroidered food bags, which he managed to get over Rollo’s flailing legs
before Charmain could draw breath to explain. Next second, Peter had the bag entirely over Rollo and was holding it up, bulging, twisting, and dripping milk, while he tried to reach one of his own pockets.

“Nice work!” he said. “Get some string out of that pocket, will you? We don’t want him getting away.” And when Charmain had fumbled out a length of purple string from the pocket, he added, “Have you had breakfast? Good. Tie the top of the bag really tight. Then take it and hold it
fast
while I get ready. Then we can go straight there.”

“Hluph, hlruther!” uttered the bag as Peter passed it over.

“Shut up,” Charmain said to it and hung on to the bag with both hands just above the purple string. The bag twisted this way and that, while Charmain watched Peter drag loops of colored string from pockets all over his coat. He put red string round his left thumb and green round his right, then purple, yellow, and pink round the first three fingers of his right hand, followed by black, white, and blue around the first three fingers of his left hand. Waif
stood on the doorstep, frayed ears cocked, staring up at the process with interest. “Are we going to find the end of the rainbow or something?” Charmain asked.

“No, but this is how I’ve memorized the way to the kobolds,” Peter explained. “Right. Shut the front door and let’s go.”

“Harrabluph!”
shouted the bag.

“And the same to you!” Peter said, leading the way to the inner door. Waif trotted after, and Charmain followed with the writhing bag.

They turned right through the door. Charmain was too preoccupied to say she thought that was the way to the Conference Room. She was remembering how easily all the kobolds had vanished and reappeared, and how Rollo himself had sunk into the earth of the mountain meadow. It seemed to her that it was only a matter of time before Rollo sank out of the bottom of the embroidered bag. She kept one hand underneath it, but she was sure that was not enough. With milk dripping between her fingers, she tried to keep Rollo in with a spell. The trouble
was, she had no idea how you did this. The only thing she could think of was to use the way she had dealt with Peter’s leaking pipe spells.
Stay inside! Stay INSIDE!
she thought at Rollo, massaging the bottom of the bag. Each massaging produced another muffled yell from the bag, which made her surer than ever that Rollo was getting away. So she simply followed Peter as he turned this way or that and never noticed how you got to the kobolds at all. She only noticed when they were there.

They were standing outside a large well-lighted cave, full of little blue people rushing about. It was hard to see what most of them were doing because the view was partly blocked by a very strange object in the entrance. This object looked a little like one of the horse-drawn sleds that people used in High Norland when the winter snows came down and made it impossible to use a cart or a carriage, except that this thing had no way to hitch a horse to it. It had a huge curvy handle at the back instead. It had curls and curvy bits all over it. Dozens of kobolds were working at it, climbing this way and that over
it as they worked. Some were lining the inside with padding and sheepskin, some were hammering and carving, and the rest were painting the outside with curly blue flowers on a gold background. It was going to be very magnificent when it was finished, whatever it was.

Peter said to Charmain, “Can I trust you to be polite this time? Can you remember to be tactful, at least?”

“I can try,” Charmain said. “It depends.”

“Then let me do the talking,” Peter told her. He tapped the nearest busy kobold on the back. “Excuse me. Can you tell me where I can find Timminz, please?”

“Halfway down the cave,” the kobold piped, pointing with her paintbrush. “Working on the cuckoo clock. What do you want him for?”

“We’ve something very important to tell him,” Peter said.

This attracted the attention of most of the kobolds working on the object. Some of them turned and looked apprehensively at Waif. Waif at
once looked sprightly, demure, and lovable. The rest stared at Charmain and the writhing embroidered bag. “Who have you got there?” one of them asked Charmain.

“Rollo,” said Charmain.

Most of them nodded, without seeming at all surprised. When Peter asked, “Is it all right to go and speak to Timminz?” they all nodded again and told him, “Go ahead.” Charmain got the feeling that nobody liked Rollo very much. Rollo seemed to know this, because he stopped writhing and made no kind of noise while Peter edged his way past the strange object and Charmain came after him, holding the bag sideways so as not to get paint on it.

“What are you making?” she asked the nearest kobolds as she went.

“Commission from the elves,” one of them answered. Another added, “Going to cost a lot.” And a third said, “Elves always pay well.”

Charmain came out into the cave feeling none the wiser. The place was huge, and there were tiny kobold children tearing about among the busy
adults. Most of the children screamed and ran away when they saw Waif. Their parents mostly moved prudently round to the back of whatever they were working on and went on painting, polishing, or carving. Peter led the way past rocking horses, doll-houses, baby-chairs, grandfather clocks, wooden settles, and wind-up wooden dolls, until they came to the cuckoo clock. It was unmistakable. It was enormous. Its giant wooden casing stretched all the way up to the magically lighted roof; its huge clock-face was propped up separately, filling most of the wall beside the casing; and the cuckoo for it, which a score of kobolds were diligently covering with feathers, was rather larger than Charmain and Peter together. Charmain wondered whoever might want a cuckoo clock that big.

Timminz was climbing about in the massive clockwork with a tiny spanner. “There he is,” Peter said, recognizing him by his nose. Peter went up to the giant works and cleared his throat. “Excuse me. Hrrmp. Excuse us.”

Timminz swung himself round a mighty coil of
metal and glowered at them. “Oh, it’s you.” He eyed the bag. “Kidnapping people now, are you?”

Rollo must have heard Timminz’s voice and felt he was among friends.
“Hrluphuph! Hlewafaphauph!”
the bag bellowed.

“That’s Rollo,” Timminz said accusingly.

“That’s right,” Peter said. “We’ve brought him here to confess to you. The lubbock on the mountain paid him to make trouble between you and Wizard Norland.”

“Hipughphy
hlephy
-phiph!” the bag shouted.

But Timminz had gone silvery blue with horror. “The
lubbock
?” he said.

“That’s right,” said Peter. “We saw him yesterday, asking the lubbock for his reward. And the lubbock gave him the crock of gold from the end of the rainbow.”

“Hiphiphuph!” denied the bag loudly. “Hlephlyiph!”

“Both of us saw it,” Peter said.

“Let him out,” Timminz said. “Let him speak.”

Peter nodded at Charmain. She took her hand
away from the bottom of the bag and stopped doing what she hoped was her spell. Rollo instantly fell through on to the floor, where he sat spitting out milky ends of embroidery wool and old crumbs and glaring at Peter.

I really did some magic! I kept him in there! Charmain thought.

“You see what they’re like?” Rollo said angrily. “Bag a person up and fill his mouth with stale fuzz so that he can’t answer back while they tells lies about him!”

“You can answer now,” Timminz said. “
Did
you get a crock of gold from the lubbock for setting us at odds with the wizard?”

“How could I have done?” Rollo asked virtuously. “No kobold would be seen dead talking to a lubbock. You all know that!”

Quite a crowd of kobolds had gathered around by now—at a safe distance from Waif—and Rollo waved dramatic arms at them.

“Bear witness!” he said. “I’m victim of a pack of lies!”

“Go and search his grotto, some of you,” Timminz ordered.

Several kobolds set off at once. Rollo jumped to his feet. “I’ll go with you!” he cried out. “I’ll
prove
there’s nothing there!”

Rollo had gone three steps when Waif seized him by the back of his blue jacket and bumped him to the floor again. She stayed there, teeth in Rollo’s jacket, frayed tail wagging, with one ear cocked toward Charmain, as if to say, “Didn’t I do well?”

“You did wonderfully well,” Charmain told her. “Good dog.”

Rollo shouted, “Call it off! It’s hurting my back!”

“No. You can stay there until they come back from searching your grotto,” Charmain said. Rollo folded his arms and sat looking righteous and sulky. Charmain turned to Timminz. “Is it all right to ask you who wants such a big clock? While we wait,” she explained, seeing Peter shaking his head at her.

Timminz looked up at the vast pieces of clock. “Crown Prince Ludovic,” he said, with a gloomy sort of pride. “He wanted a whopper for Castel
Joie.” Gloom swallowed up his pride. “He hasn’t paid us a penny yet. He never does pay. When you think how rich he is—”

He was interrupted by the kobolds coming back at a run. “Here it is!” they shouted. “Is this it? It was under his bed!”

The kobold in front was carrying the crock in both arms. It looked like an ordinary clay pottery crock, the kind someone might use to make a stew in an oven, except that it had a sort of glow around it, in faint rainbow colors.

“That’s the one,” Peter said.

“Then what do you think he did with the gold?” the kobold asked.

“What do you
mean,
what did I do with the gold?” Rollo demanded. “That there pot was stuffed full—” He stopped, realizing he was giving himself away.

“It isn’t now. Take a look if you don’t believe me,” the other kobold retorted. He dumped the crock down between Rollo’s outstretched legs. “This is just how we found it.”

Rollo bent to look inside the pot. He uttered a cry of grief. He plunged his hand into it and brought out a handful of dry, yellow leaves. Then he brought out another handful, and another, until he had both hands inside the empty crock and was sitting surrounded in dead leaves.

“It’s
gone
!” he howled. “It’s turned into dead leaves! That lubbock
cheated
me!”

“So you admit the lubbock paid you to make trouble?” Timminz said.

Rollo scowled up sideways at Timminz. “I don’t admit to anything, except that I’ve been robbed.”

Peter coughed. “Ahem. I’m afraid the lubbock cheated him worse than that. It laid its eggs in him as soon as his back was turned.”

There were gasps from all round. Big-nosed kobold faces stared at Rollo, pale blue with horror, noses and all, and then turned to Peter.

“It’s true. We both saw it,” Peter said.

Charmain nodded when they turned to her. “True,” she said.

“It’s a lie!” Rollo howled. “You’re pulling my leg!”

“No we are
not
!” Charmain said. “The lubbock stuck out its egg-laying prong and got you in the back just before you went down into the earth. Didn’t you say just now that your back hurt you?”

Rollo’s eyes popped at Charmain. He believed her. His mouth opened. Waif scrambled hastily away as he began to scream. He threw the pot aside, he drummed his heels in a storm of dry leaves and yelled until his face was navy blue. “I’m a
goner
!” he blubbered. “I’m walking dead! There’s
things
breeding inside of me!
Help!
Oh, please
help
me, somebody!”

Nobody helped him. All the kobolds backed away, still staring in horror. Peter looked disgusted. One lady kobold said, “What a
disgraceful
display!” and this seemed so unfair to Charmain that she could not help feeling truly sorry for Rollo.

“The elves can help him,” she said to Timminz.

“What did you say?” Timminz snapped his fingers. There was sudden silence. Although Rollo continued to drum his heels and to open and shut his mouth, nobody could hear the noise. “
What
did you say?” Timminz said to Charmain.

“The elves,” Charmain said. “They know how to get lubbock eggs out of a person.”

“Yes, they do,” Peter agreed. “Wizard Norland had had lubbock eggs laid in him. That was why they took him away to cure him. An elf came yesterday with the eggs they’d taken out of him.”

“Elves charge high,” remarked a kobold by Charmain’s right knee, sounding very impressed.

“I think the King paid,” Charmain said.

“Hush!” Timminz’s brow was wrinkling right down into his nose. He sighed. “I suppose,” he said, “we can give the elves their sled chair for nothing, in exchange for them curing Rollo. Curses! That’s
two
commissions we won’t get paid for now! Put Rollo to bed, some of you, and I’ll talk to the elves. And I warn all of you
again
not to go near that meadow.”